Opinion India and Pak: Talks about Talks
PM's remarks on his way back from the G-8 meetings in Italy suggest that a deal with Pak on the resumption of talks,may be at hand.
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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remarks Saturday on his way back from the G-8 meetings in Italy suggest that a deal with Pakistan on the resumption of talks,suspended after the attacks on Mumbai last November,may be at hand.
Delhi now seems to be waiting for two public gestures from Islamabad. One is a credible move on prosecuting the plotters of Mumbai attack; and the other a reaffirmation of Islamabad’s commitment on preventing its territory from being used for attacks against India.
If all goes well–between India and Pakistan you can never be too sure–the agreement may be announced this week at the meeting between the Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir on the margins of the non-aligned conference at Sharm-el-Sheikh later this week. Hours after that Dr Singh should be sitting down with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.
On his return flight from Italy,Dr Singh said,”We have been told by Pakistan that they would take action against those guilty for Mumbai. I hope they do so. That hope is the reason why I am looking forward to the meeting with Gilani Sahib.”
Clearly,’talks about talks’ have been underway after Dr Singh met Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg last month. It is no secret that Washington has been encouraging Pakistan to follow through on the Mumbai prosecutions and nudging India to resume talks.
Some of the recent statements from the Pakistani leadership do suggest a measure of rethinking on the relationship with India. Zardari has declared that the principal threat to Pakistan and its way of life comes from the extremists and not India.
Even more boldly,Zardari has acknowledged that militants were created by Pakistan in the past as a deliberate instrument of policy which has come to haunt the nation after 911.
India has no reason to disbelieve Zardari’s good intentions,but has many to question the motivations of the Pakistan Army,that calls all the shots in Islamabad. This is where the United States,the only one with some leverage on the Pakistan Army,comes in.
Whatever the source of pressure on Pakistan,two developments stand out. One is the willingness of ISI to talk about Mumbai with Indian officials. Until now Pakistan’s all powerful domestic and external intelligence agency had been reluctant to engage,let alone cooperate,with India on counter-terrorism.
The other is an important statement from Pakistan’s Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani that came close to endorsing Zardari’s definition of the hierarchy of Pakistan’s national security threats.
Gen Kayani declared that “while the external threat to Pakistan continues to exist,it is the internal threat that merits immediate attention”. Grudging as it may be,Kayani’s statement could not have come about without Washington’s encouragement.
As it prepares to resume the dialogue with Islamabad,there will be no dearth of scepticism in New Delhi. Dr Singh,however,has been right in keeping an open mind on the possibilities for change in Pakistan’s behaviour,without betting on it. Put another way,India is ready for some real progress with Islamabad,but remains on alert to the perennial prospect of regression.
(C. Raja Mohan is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,Nanyang Technological University,Singapore.)
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